[In accordance with the method stated above, which] It is known, for example, from the U.S. journal "The International Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Implants", Volume 1, No. 1, 1986, to attach epithesis, i.e. special prostheses, [are attached] separably to bone tissue, in particular for craniofacial reconstruction. Reference is also made to U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,330,891 and 4,498,461. The method is based on the observation that when titanium fixtures are implanted in bone tissue, bone tissue grows around the[m] fixtures without formation of an intermediate layer, and the fixtures [they] can thereby be embedded such that other components can in turn be fixed to the fixtures [them].
According to prior art, screws are screwed into the osseointegrated fixtures and the heads of the individual screws screwed in [in] this manner are connected together by means of a wire structure. This wire structure is located at a distance of a few millimeters from the skin and is therefore visible from the outside. In an early design, the epithesis proper is clipped onto the wire structure, and to this end the epithesis, which is manufactured largely from silicone rubber, has plastic clips embedded in the silicone material and formed according to the path of the wire structure. These clips are pressed onto the wire structure, thereby holding the epithesis to the wire structure. In another design, the wire structure includes permanent magnets, [and] the paired attracting magnets are embedded at the corresponding points of the epithesis proper, thereby providing magnetic retention of the entire epithesis to the wire structure.
This previously known method has a number of disadvantages. Manufacture of the wire structure is very labo[u]r-intensive. The wire structure also obstructs cleaning of the skin or impedes cleaning if the wire structure is of removable design. The wire structure is irritating to the patient; when the epithesis is removed for washing or showering, a rigid structure remains in place which is obstructive and which the patient perceives as alien. Moreover, manufacture of the epithesis is also labo[u]r-intensive, since the appropriate corresponding components, i.e. clips or magnets, must be embedded in the silicone rubber material. The rubber material, however, bonds neither to the magnets nor to the clips, and special measures are therefore also necessary in this regard. A genuinely reliable, long-term embedding of the corresponding components in the silicone material is, however, not achieved in this way.
Taking as a basis the method described above, the object of the invention is to improve this method and to provide an epithesis with a fixing device for application of this [the] method to the effect that the fixing device is substantially simplified, that the manufacture of the fixing device and therefore [of] the epithesis is likewise substantially simplified, that fitting and removal of the epithesis is simplified for the patient, at the same time guaranteeing a sufficiently secure connection of the epithesis, which cannot always be achieved with magnetic attachment, and that the need for a wire structure is obviated.